The examples Peter points out indicate to me a failure
to differentiate between functional vocabularies, such
as that defined for RDF and RDFS, and namespaces, which
are just part of the syntactic machinery to achieve
globally distinct names.
Thus, a term in a functional vocabulary can be deprecated,
or removed, or added; but the infinite set of terms grounded
in a given namespace remains static.
I think that nearly all of the uses below of 'namespace'
should be changed to 'vocabulary', and that the usage of
the term 'namespace' be checked in all the specs and changed
to 'vocabulary' where appropriate.
As I've pointed out (possibly too) many times,
namespace != vocabulary
Cheers,
Patrick
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Peter F. Patel-Schneider
> [mailto:pfps@research.bell-labs.com]
> Sent: 30 January, 2003 17:04
> To: www-rdf-comments@w3.org
> Subject: What does RDF consider a namespace to be?
>
>
>
>
> What does RDF consider a namespace to be?
>
> It appears to me that the XML namespaces document makes XML namespace
> simply be the set of URI references that share a common
> prefix. Therefore
> all XML namespaces contain an infinite and unchanging set of URI
> references.
>
> However, Concepts says that ''Some terms in these namespaces have been
> deprecated, some have been added, ...'' which appears to
> indicate that the
> names in the namespace can be changed. Does RDF actually use
> a different
> meaning of a namespace than is used in XML?
>
> Other places in the RDF documents also seem to indicate that
> RDF considers
> namespaces to have finite and changing sets of URI references. For
> example, Section 5.1 of RDF Syntax says
>
> The [RDF] namespace contains the following names only:
> ...
> Any other names are not defined ....
>
> Concepts says
>
> Vocabulary terms defined in the rdfs: namespace are
> defined in the
> RDF schema vocabulary specification ....
>
>